Mataka Askari lives in Columbia with his family and works as a certified peer specialist for those dealing with substance use disorders. He’s also actively using his experiences from spending 23 and a half years in prison to help others.
He's been out of prison for approximately 18 months, and, in this special, he reflects on his childhood and his personal growth during those many years in prison.
On Growing up in St. Louis
I've been involved in the criminal justice system in one form or another since I was a juvenile. I've been on some form of supervision on probation or parole since I was 14 years old.
So, I grew up in St. Louis, Missouri. I came up in a community that was primarily impoverished, and there was drug activity and violence – even though like it, in the 70s and 80s, it wasn't as escalated as it was in the 90s. So, growing up, I really didn't understand that I was poor until I got a little older and was able to recognize it.
And so, by me having influences around me that offered an immediate reprieve to the poverty in the form of crime, naturally, instead of just working, waiting when you need something right now, right? The last thing you thinking about is let me go fill out this job application so that I can work a couple of weeks and then the check come.
You have situations when you're impoverished, that need immediate addressing: bills, food, clothing, and so a lot of times when people don't have the resources and they don't have the time to be able to fill out applications and wait for jobs, they take advantage of whatever opportunities in the community – crime, whether there's robbery, whether it's dealing, whether it’s selling drugs, or whatever it is that they need to do in order to make ends meet.
I have never had an opportunity to live outside of those influences, and so, in February of 1995, I started a 30-year sentence for the illegal distribution and manufacturing of a controlled substance – selling cocaine. The thing is, in the 90s, when the drug epidemic hit the inner-city communities, it was a criminal justice issue. Now that opioids and methamphetamines are starting to impact other areas, it’s a mental health issue.
So, they need to go back and start applying today's understanding, retro-activate the understanding and start to free some of those guys who struggled with substance use disorder and who are still in prison and languish in jails across America for the things that people are getting treatment for today.
This current episode or manifestation of opioids did not start with heroin in the streets. It started in the medicine cabinets of suburbia in America. That's where it started. From doctors prescribing opiates and children reaching the medicine cabinets recreationally and then starting to develop a dependency on it.
On His Time in Prison
I started my prison sentence at the old Jefferson City Correctional Center – Missouri State Penitentiary. The one that’s closed down now. That they do tours on. So, while I was in prison, I remember vividly the incident that started to shift my course of thinking.
So, they don't have doors, they had bars, and I was on the top walk – they called it “eight walk.” And the bottom walk, the first floor, is called “the flag.” So, imagine: there are open cells, four tiers up, with men screaming and hollering all night.
So naturally being in a situation that I didn't want to be in, I had relied on my traditional coping mechanisms, which was drugs and alcohol, right? So, while I was there, me and my cellmate were smoking a little weed, drinking some homemade wine, and I'm listening and I'm hearing these guys screaming, hollering, and laughing and playing. And these guys have been locked up 10, 15, 20 years, and I said to myself, “Do I want to be like that? 20 years from now?”
And I didn't.
That was my epiphany, right? The fullness of the transformation did not take place then, but that's what – that started me turning the corner. And so, once I started turning the corner, naturally, I start asking questions, and a guy introduced me to the “Autobiography of Malcolm X.” It changed my life forever.
So, here was a guy – like me. In the streets, hustling, using drugs and alcohol as coping mechanisms, right? Went to prison and started to learn some stuff that counteracted those things that he had been conditioned to believe, and so, he freed himself from imprisoning ideologies that stopped him from realizing his potential, and I identified with that. And so, I studied that “Autobiography of Malcolm X,” and Malcolm X reversed the way I thought.
By saying “Okay, listen. Study this. You've been taught wrong, like your people are not savages. They didn't come from a dark continent where they were running around with bones in their noses and spears.”
When we study the history, you can look at the four West African empires of Mali, Ghana, Songhai, and Kanem-Bornu. You can look at certain Kemetic or Egyptian societies, and you can see, right? How your people have contributed things to society, and you come from that lineage, so their greatness is genetically stored in you.
And when I started to understand that, and I started to study, it empowered me with information, and it was through that power that I found the strength to redefine myself and overcome some of the things that have prevented me from being the best me.
On Sharing with Others
So, I became like a bibliophile, like I studied those books. I mean, studied, studied, studied, and so I used to go out and we called it “The Cipher,” “The Circle,” and we used to talk about the information, right? That we studied. To make sure we had clear understanding, to metaphorize it, to make sure we understood it properly.
It was through those building experiences, right? That I also was able to develop an understanding that further empowered me. And I understood, right? That if this helped me, it would help another person.
And so, I use this example all the time. If I was a marine biologist, and you brought me a fish, right? That was dead, and you say, “I don't know what happened to this fish.” I dissect the fish, I see the fish died, but I really cannot accurately understand what it died for, and you continue to bring me fish from this area. Sooner or later, I'm gonna have to test the water that the fish swimming in – the environment. The environment.
I understood that a lot of my friends who I grew up with, were all in this same situation. The toxicity of the environment. The poverty – poverty breeds despair, despair breeds criminality.
And so poverty and the unhealthy images that we have internalized, a lot of people, especially young black men, do not want to accept the fact that there is this sense of self-worth that is based on concepts and ideas that have been set up by other people, and we strive to meet that and anytime we fail to meet that, it impacts how we feel and think about ourselves.
This plays into our self-esteem and it starts to erect these barriers of “I can't,” and if you don't believe that you're capable of something, you can't even utilize your internal resources to summon the inspiration to try to tackle the thing, and so, a lot of people are really defeated before they even have an opportunity to try.
Music by BenJamin Banger.
